


Absence

by anythingbutblue



Category: The Walking Dead (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 11:19:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2810324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anythingbutblue/pseuds/anythingbutblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A grieving Christa finds herself alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Absence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AntigravityDevice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntigravityDevice/gifts).



_Hey._

A dull ache throbbed above her left ear.

 _Hey_ , Omid's voice repeated. 

She groaned, unwilling to move a muscle.

_You always hated getting up._

"There's nothing past tense about it," she mumbled.

His arm curled around her. He was a warm presence at her back. When he spoke she could feel his breath against the back of her neck. _Good point. And nothing about a zombie apocalypse makes a person **more** eager to get up._

"You do what you've gotta do."

_Now that you're good at._

The ache on the left side of her head persisted, but it was nothing compared to the bolt of pain through her ankle when she tried to move it. "Can say that again."

She opened her eyes. The ground was damp beneath her, and the dark gray sky rumbled above the treetops. She touched her hand to the side of her head and couldn't quite muster surprise when her fingers felt a small patch of matted hair there, no doubt with drying blood.

How long had she been out?

And Clem! Oh, God, _Clem_.

She pushed herself up slowly, working through a moment's dizziness.

She's the biggest fucking idiot, she told herself as she looked around. What was she thinking leaving Clementine alone? Pride warred with frustration: she knows that if Clementine hadn't caused that little distraction she could be in much worse shape than she is now.

She could be like the guy found lying a few feet away from her, face-down in the grass and unmoving. She might have recognized his face, but turning him over revealed a messy head wound that her eyes avoided as she checked for a pulse -- checked twice to be sure -- and patted him down. His gun was hers and his spare ammo went into her pocket. The sheathed knife sticking out of his boot hooked into her back pocket, but before she went anywhere she drew the blade.

The man must've died slowly, painfully, and couldn't have been dead long since she was still in one undevoured piece upon waking. All she could do was make sure he wouldn't turn.

*

Limping through the woods, damp from intermittent rain, she shivered. _Should've brought an umbrella_ , she could practically hear Omid lament in a tone only partially joking.

Should've done a lot of things.

She found the fire she and Clementine had made, only two stray embers left glowing. If there was danger, would Clem really have come back here?

Maybe if she was hurt. Maybe if--

Shifting her weight off her injured ankle, she scrubbed one hand over her face. Clementine was brave and resourceful, a smart girl, but when it came right down to it she'd be a scared little kid facing off with bullies over twice her size. Armed bullies.

There was no telling if it was a good sign or not that there was no sign of Clem.

 _No news is good news_ , Omid might have suggested, and there could be truth to it. Just like on television: if you don't see a body, can you be sure a person's dead? She wanted to turn and say it to Omid, to throw him off a little by indulging in a little humor of her own, to make him smile because right this second that would be the only thing that could make _her_ smile.

But there was no Omid.

No Clementine, either. She tilted her head back and watched the moon peek out from behind a cluster of clouds.

"Fuck."

*

Omid would tell her to take it easy. He'd say she needed to go easy on her ankle to allow it to heal. He'd be right and she knew it, but making the effort to find Clementine seemed more important. 

It was funny, though: how well she could hear his voice after weeks and weeks without hearing it. 

_Do you think David Bowie is a zombie?_

He'd always had a knack for distracting her, taking her mind off problems. Once the general public starting turning into hungry zombies there were times when she snapped at him for it, not always willing to play along with that coping mechanism, and times like these she regretted it.

But no, she had trouble imagining David Bowie as a zombie. And not just David Bowie, she'd tell him if she could: Madonna, Prince, Dave Grohl, Beyonce.

_Steve Buscemi. Edward Olmos._

Phylicia Rashad would be her next offer.

_That guy who played Sayid on LOST._

If he was half as deadly as his character he'd put them all to shame with one arm tied behind his back.

Somehow it always came down to who they _didn't_ think would be a zombie. In retrospect she wondered if that was something Omid had intentionally steered them toward for whatever small sliver of hope they'd get out of it. She hadn't always been in the mood, but Omid had been willing to take a laugh where he could get it.

She sort of envied that about him, but it felt wrong to envy someone she'd had to bury.

*

The pharmacy section was a mess, but she couldn't have expected anything else. Some of the shelves were tipped over, and something in the air smelled stale. Two unmoving bodies were crumpled just inside the door.

She'd hadn't given her ankle much time to heal and she wanted a brace or something to provide support. Fortunately, the pharmacy was still well-stocked with braces, insoles, foot sprays and creams. Sitting down on the floor, she took off her shoe, her sock, and opened a packaged brace right then and there.

When she heard quiet footsteps behind her she immediately dropped the half-opened brace and aimed her gun.

"Whoa." The stranger purposefully pointed her rifle away, making a show of fully removing her hand from the trigger. "Thought you might be a walker, that's all."

"Easy assumption to make," Christa admitted, lowering her gun slightly. "Sorry to disappoint."

Omid would've liked that line.

"I'll take a live person over a zombie most days of the week." The woman pushed a long blue-tipped brown braid back over her shoulder and nodded to Christa's bare foot. "You okay?"

"Yeah." Being honest was important, but her emotional state wasn't something she wanted to discuss. She picked up the half-packaged brace and showed it off. "Just babying an ankle."

"You... need anything?"

Christa's gut instinct was _no_. It would be easier to just say no. "Not unless you've got spare food, spare water, or a car."

The woman hesitated, scratching her head self-consciously and shouldering her rifle. "You don't waste much time, do you?"

"You asked."

A slow shrug signaled concession. "I may be able to help."

*

"Getting into a car with a stranger will never feel right." Christa made herself stick out her hand. There was a time when introductions were easier, when every first meeting felt less perilous. She missed feeling casual. "But my name's Christa," she said, wanting despite herself to believe an exchange of names would make it harder to kill each other without an excellent reason.

"I'm Jen. Sorry for pointing a gun at you."

Christa couldn't do anything but shrug her shoulders. "Not shooting makes a difference."

Half a smile warmed Jen's expression for a moment. She lifted her hand and pointed ahead of them. "That's our ride."

It was a dirty white pick-up with the vaguely familiar blue-and-silver Prism Springs logo on each side. She'd definitely had their water before, or at least refilled their bottles.

_Getting a ride in the company car. Nice._

A lone walker staggered in their path, its breath a heavy rasp.

"I've got it," Christa volunteered. It seemed like the least she could do with what seemed to be a genuine offer of help in front of her.

Jen spread her hands as if to say 'be my guest,' and Christa unsheathed her new knife, making a wide arc around the walker before moving in to strike. She aimed her foot at its inner knee, and when it stumbled she buried her knife in the back of its head. As she turned back around, wiping off her blade, she was surprised to see Jen removing a key chain from her pocket and unlocking the truck doors.

"No offense," she started, opening the passenger door and climbing in, "but I'd assumed you'd just found this truck somewhere. It's yours?"

"It's more mine than anyone else's." Once buckled into her seat, Jen started the truck. "I used to do secretarial work for the local warehouse. A few days after the shit hit the fan I decided living at the office was better than staying in my apartment building. Had to put down one of the delivery guys to get in, though."

Christa's people skills felt a little rusty. She watched the road as Jen drove. "The walls in my old apartment building were so thin that I never liked my neighbors much. At least they didn't want to eat me at the time."

"Exactly."

*

The front office of the Prism Springs warehouse was surprisingly homey, considering.

Behind the front desk was a twin mattress piled with blankets, topped with two pillows and a small patchwork teddy bear that looked well past its prime. Through a doorway Christa could see a small kitchen. A second doorway seemed to lead to another office -- "Formerly my boss's," Jen commented -- and a third led to a bathroom. Another door, this one closed, led... to water storage, she guessed?

"Dug out a fire pit behind the building, but I can turn on the standby generator while you're here. Mostly I've saved fuel for bad weather... or emergencies. Or my birthday." 

"Don't go to any extra trouble for my sake."

_Christa. Sweetest. Does turning on a generator for a few hours and enjoying heat and electricity in the comfort of a secure building sound like extra trouble?_

Jen spared her a vaguely amused look. "It's no trouble. Limited shelf life anyway, so if I don't use it I'll lose it. You can wash up in the bathroom, wrap that ankle, have some hot soup. I'll get you some bottles of water, and I don't mind if you want to catch some shut-eye while you're here."

She had to wonder if her smile looked as weak as it felt. She wished Omid could step in and be a little more effortlessly gracious. "I appreciate this, don't get me wrong. It seems like a nice set-up and right now it almost sounds too good to be true."

"Nothing's perfect. I mean, not to sound ominous. I just feel pretty sure there's no such thing as well-adjusted these days. I don't know if I'm missing out by living alone and not looking for a group, and I'm sure I'll be forced to find out one day." Jen's tone implied that it was inevitable and probably not something she looked forward to. "But not today."

Christa sat with words on the tip of her tongue for a moment, but then spoke up again. "Speaking of looking for a group," she started, swallowing her reluctance. "I was traveling with a little girl up until a few days ago. We ran into some trouble a few miles away and got separated. I've been combing the area, trying to find her, but no luck."

"I'm sorry." Jen's eyes softened. "I haven't seen _any_ kids lately, now that you mention it."

Of course not. It could never be that simple. "Yeah." Tired, Christa shifted her weight off her aching ankle again. "When I met her I hadn't seen one in a while myself."

*

Early morning light angled in around the window's shades. Christa opened her eyes grudgingly, but she closed them again immediately. Someone was humming very quietly in an adjoining room. She couldn't quite make out the tu--

_These--_

An arm curled around her, one hand resting on her midsection.

_\--arms--_

Lips touched her neck as they formed each word.

_\--of miiine--_

It'd been a big surprise when she'd discovered that Omid could do more than carry a tune. He was capable of singing in a beautiful untrained tenor, ragged around the edges but she liked it that way. The problem was that if anyone besides her was listening he'd get silly and go for laughs after a line or two, self-conscious.

_Good song. Otis sings the hell out of it._

That was nice and all, but she was still tired. It was a brand of tired that lined every muscle in her body.

The kiss on the back of her neck was feather-light. _I remember the time you woke up early on a Saturday and left bed to play Dragon Age 2. I wish I'd had a camera to catch that look on your face when I walked into the living room. Half guilt, half defiance._

"You'd been talking about that stupid game for weeks," she muttered in protest, turning her face into her borrowed pillow. "I had to see what the big deal was."

_You liked it._

"I kicked ass."

_Maybe that's when I knew you were the one._

"You are an incredible dork."

His arm tightened around her. _Yeah, but I'm the incredible dork of your dreams._

The _beepbeep_ of the microwave traveled from the kitchen better than Jen's low uneven humming, but it stopped almost as soon as it started. Christa opened her eyes again.

*

"I'll try to keep an eye out for the girl," Jen promised, palming the steering wheel. "It's a tough crowd out there even if you're fully grown."

"Thanks." Armed with an old windbreaker right out of Jen's makeshift closet, Christa opened her door and slid out of the truck. "Clementine's smart, but I don't think she's ready to navigate wall-to-wall zombies alone."

"You got a destination in mind? Somewhere she could find you?"

It'd been two and a half days. She walked those woods for hours and found no sign of Clementine, but it was hard to give up the hope that it could happen. "You could tell her I'm sticking to the original plan." Her hands idled on the truck door. She knew what she was going to do; she'd just never imagined doing it without Clem. The very idea made guilt creep in. "I'm heading toward Wellington."

There was no flicker of recognition on Jen's face. "If I see her I'll let her know."

"It's farther north, but rumors say there's a refuge for survivors."

"I hope the rumors are right."

"Thanks for the jacket. And everything else."

Jen's smile reappeared. "Just don't get killed out there. I need to believe the population hasn't been reduced to zombies and assholes."

_I think she should come along._

Yeah, Omid would feel that way, but if Jen wanted to tag along she would say so. Christa finally closed the truck door, taking the time to aim a grateful wave through the window before she turned away.

This easy-come-easy-go goodbye wasn't how most separations went, and she'd had enough of losing people.

*

The sun cast a golden glow and helped to thaw her limbs a bit. Its mid-day warmth was a sharp reminder that every day was getting colder, every morning felt more frigid. And here she was, either brilliant or too stubborn for her own good, heading north.

Clementine had always seemed a little skeptical of continuing the trek north, inviting the cold. A Georgia girl, she withstood summer's heat with minor complaints, but cool mornings always saw her curled up tightly with whatever cover was available to her.

_You've done what you can._

Christa wasn't convinced.

*

_If you want to avoid getting attached to anyone else what's the point of going to Wellington?_

Watching crisp brown leaves swirl over the pavement in front of her, she fought the urge to roll her eyes. As if it mattered, as if purposefully ignoring the point she could almost hear her dead boyfriend making might lead to him getting offended, as if they'd argue. She huddled into her jacket as much as humanly possible.

A little security didn't feel like too much to ask of the world. Even with Clementine gone she still thought it'd be ideal to find an actual community of survivors, a place where she could go to bed secure in the knowledge that when she woke up the first person she'd see wouldn't be trying to kill her. Whether or not she formed attachments there... well, that would have to be a bridge she crossed when she got there.

If Wellington was even what she'd hoped.

Before the sky started dimming she knew she had to find shelter for the night. She bypassed a rest area just off the highway, expecting it to be too obvious a stop for anyone on the road, and followed the next exit to a major intersection. A handful of zombies were grazing or whatever on the grassy hillside, but she stayed quiet and skirted their sight, keeping her gun in her hand just in case.

_Discretion is the better part of valor._

That was more or less the sentiment she'd tried to stress to Clementine. Helping people was good and making sure walkers were dead was an excellent habit to get into, but underestimating enemies, no matter how slow and predictable they were, was a quick way to get yourself killed. With the limited number of bullets she had, she was choosing caution the rest of the way to Wellington.

_How about that survival instinct?_

Inwardly she bristled, but she knew it was strong. She was still trying.

*

Signs announcing the distance to Wellington gradually became more common. She'd been waking up to a frosty crust on the ground, an extra reason to watch her step, but that frost gave way to a blanket of snow as she continued north. Her ankle still ached most of the day, and nights, wherever she was camped, came with a stiffness she couldn't seem to work out.

Her mantra, measured to the beat of her footsteps, was always the number of miles the signs promised the rest of her trip would take. Fifty-five, then twenty-two, then ten. The miles seemed to lengthen as she shuffled through the melting snow, and once off the highway pointing herself in the direction of Wellington became a little more of a guessing game. All she had was a direction.

_What will you do if Wellington isn't what you're expecting?_

She imagined Omid's face. It almost seemed funny that she immediately imagined him with a bristly jaw. In all the time she'd known him _before_ people starting turning into zombies he'd been clean shaven. 

_You really liked the facial hair._

It was second nature to see his shadow next to hers, but she tried not to watch the snow for it.

_If I'd known I'd have shaved less often, but let's not change the subject._

She was already taking one day at a time. That was all she could do.

*

In the distance an ominous column of smoke rose into the sky.

_It could just be a bonfire. People need to keep warm._

It could be burning buildings, too, and it seemed bound to attract attention, but she was still going north and whatever was going on was directly in her path.

As she reached the crest of the next hill she was surprised to see large heavy-duty walls ahead, the source of the smoke. Her heart rose into her throat. If it was Wellington it wasn't a moment too soon. She was down to a half a bottle of water, a packet of stale trail mix, a sliver of hope.

Spurred by the sight, she felt herself walking faster. There were a few walkers between her and those walls, but she was still armed and a place like that? It must have people watching the perimeter.

Spotting her, two of the walkers turned, all sunken cheeks and torn flesh, and shambled in her general direction. She drew her pistol, pointing it at the nearest one, waiting until she was just a little bit closer to pull the trigger.

A shot rang out to interrupt her, and a bullet caught the walker right on the forehead. It fell instantly. Playing it safe, she froze, still holding the gun out in front of her, but a second bullet downed the walker's equally hungry partner. Yet another shot broke the stillness and she saw the last walker crumple to ground.

_At least the snipers can tell the living from the undead._

There was a tiny electronic screech and then an announcement was made: "Please stay where you are and put down your weapons."

She wasn't wild about being asked to put down her weapons, but the threat had been removed. To show her willingness to cooperate, she slowly and deliberately put the pistol down. She also removed the knife and set it beside the gun. When she was done, she raised both hands, fingers splayed as if to show just how empty-handed she was.

"Approach the door ahead of you."

Thin white letters on the door spelled out _WELLINGTON_. She'd made it.

An idiot traveling north in the winter, chasing rumors, but she'd made it.

Closing the distance, she watched as a door above the entrance opened. A broad-shouldered man in a blue flannel shirt tossed out a duffel bag.

She looked up at him, eyebrows arched questioningly.

"Unfortunately," he called out, "Wellington is at full capacity right now. That bag--"

More words came out of his mouth, but it was as though someone had muted him. Her brain was stuck on the phrase 'full capacity.'

"Wait, you're just... turning people away?"

*

As promised, the bag was full of supplies: rations, bottled water, a first-aid kit. It even included a thin fuzzy blanket, the kind a flight attendant might provide.

Under other circumstances it would seem a lot nicer, but under these the generosity was just bitter fruit on her tongue.

She'd been urged to check again in a few months, no promises made, but what was she supposed to do? Set up camp on their perimeter, shivering in the snow, letting their security team snipe any walkers that came near? Find a place to stay in the nearest town, probably already stripped bare by other people who couldn't get in?

_There can only be so much room inside those walls._

She knew that was true, but she didn't want to hear it, didn't want to think it, didn't want to acknowledge it. After all this time spent thinking it'd be business as usual if she never found Wellington she was surprised by how gutted she felt after being turned away. For the first time since her newborn died in her arms she felt like she could cry.

She didn't. Instead she turned back -- at least she knew the way -- and forced one foot in front of the other, scouting the nearest residences. She had her weapons again. She had supplies.

_You'll make it._

A whimper broke the neighborhood's eerie stillness. At first she thought she was imagining it, but it continued, wavering, the hiccuping and helpless cry of a baby. At first she turned away, but after a few minutes she directed herself back toward the sound, protective instincts flaring up despite her best efforts. The world wasn't very kind to anyone any more, but it was less kind to children.

Low shushing accompanied the crying as she got closer. "It's okay, AJ. I've still got you."


End file.
